a festival of the Christian church, observed on the 25th of December, in memory of the nativity of Jesus Christ. As to the antiquity of this festival, the first traces we find of it are in the second century, about the time of the Emperor Commodus. The decretal epistles indeed carry it a little higher, and state that Telesphorus, who lived in the reign of Antoninus Pius, ordered divine service to be celebrated, and an angelical hymn to be sung, the night before the nativity of our Saviour. But we have a melancholy proof that it was observed before the times of Constantine; for whilst the persecution raged under Diocletian, who then kept his court at Nicomedia, that prince, among his many acts of cruelty, finding multitudes of Christians assembled together to celebrate Christ's nativity, commanded the church doors where they were met to be shut, and fire to be put to it, which, in a short time, reduced the church and all within it to ashes.